Complex Conceptions of Time with David Krakauer, Ted Chiang, David Wolpert, & James Gleick
COMPLEXITYShow Notes
And now for something completely different! Last October, The Santa Fe Institute held its third InterPlanetary Festival at SITE Santa Fe, celebrating the immensely long time horizon, deep scientific and philosophical questions, psychological challenges, and engineering problems involved in humankind’s Great Work to extend its understanding and presence into outer space. For our third edition, we turned our attention to visionary projects living generations will likely not live to see completed — interstellar travel, off-world cities, radical new ways of understanding spacetime — as an invitation to engage in science as not merely interesting but deeply fun. For our first panel, we decided to inquire: What is time, really? How has science fiction changed the way we track and measure, speak about, and live in time? And how do physics and complex systems science pose and answer these most fundamental questions? Welcome to COMPLEXITY, the official podcast of the Santa Fe Institute. I’m your host, Michael Garfield, and every other week we’ll bring you with us for far-ranging conversations with our worldwide network of rigorous researchers developing new frameworks to explain the deepest mysteries of the universe. In this week’s episode, we share the Complex Conceptions of Time panel from InterPlanetary Festival 2022, moderated by SFI President David Krakauer and featuring an all-star trinity of panelists: science journalist James Gleick, sci-fi author and SFI Miller Scholar Ted Chiang, and physicist and SFI Professor David Wolpert. In this hour, we play with and dissect some favorite metaphors for time, unroll the history of time’s mathematization, review time travel in science fiction, and examine the arguments between free will and determinism. Be sure to check out our extensive show notes with links to all our references at complexity.simplecast.com — as well as the extensive, interactive web-based “Voyager Golden Record Liner Notes” with links to not only all of the panels from IPFest 2022 but also copious additional resources, including contributor bios, peer-reviewed publications, science fiction and nonfiction science writing, and more… If you value our research and communication efforts, please subscribe, rate and review us at Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and consider making a donation — or finding other ways to engage with us — at santafe.edu/engage. If you’d like some HD virtual backgrounds of the SFI campus to use on video calls and a chance to win a signed copy of one of our books from the SFI Press, help us improve our science communication by completing a survey about our various scicomm channels. Thanks for your time! Lastly, we have a bevy of summer programs coming up! Join us June 19-23 for Collective Intelligence: Foundations + Radical Ideas, a first-ever event open to both academics and professionals, with sessions on adaptive matter, animal groups, brains, AI, teams, and more. Space is limited! The application deadline has been extended to March 1st. OR apply to the Graduate Workshop on Complexity in Social Science. OR the Complexity GAINS UK program for PhD students. (OR check our open listings for a staff or research job!) Join our Facebook discussion group to meet like minds and talk about each episode. Podcast theme music by Mitch Mignano. Episode cover art by Michael Garfield with the help of Midjourney. Follow us on social media: Twitter • YouTube • Facebook • Instagram • LinkedIn (SOME) Mentioned & Related Links: David Krakauer Mathematical languages shape our understanding of time in physics by Nicolas Gisin Does Time Really Flow? New Clues Come From a Century-Old Approach to Math by Natalie Wolchover The Principle of Least Action Path Integral Formulation Closed Timelike Curve The Time Machine by H. G. Wells Kip Thorne James Gleick Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman The Physicist and The Philosopher by Jimena Canales Ted Chiang “Story of Your Life” Arrival Exhalation Russian Doll (TV series)
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